STACK q-type Analytics is a Moodle local_ plugin that turns STACK (Maxima CAS) quiz activity into analytics for teachers and question authors: course-wide statistics, per-quiz drill-downs, two Analytics-API prediction models, and diagnostic reports — all computed in plain PHP, in-process, on the Moodle server itself.
What it is
One installable plugin, four sections, reached from a single "Analytics" entry in a course's navigation:
- Quiz Analytics — course-wide, cross-quiz comparison.
- Question Analytics — a single quiz's response statistics and review, plus a currently-hidden Solution Process Visualization view (PRT transition graphs, response-tree distance charts).
- Model Analytics — Model 1 ("student at risk") and Model 2 ("question/PRT needs review"), both Moodle Analytics API models.
- Diagnostics Analytics — seed-bias and PRT branch-coverage reports, deliberately kept outside the prediction pipeline since they have no natural ground-truth label to predict against.
See How Everything Is Calculated for exactly what each of these computes, and Instructor Guide for how to use them day to day.
What it deliberately is not
- Not a separate service. There is no analytics server, no Python process, no queue to run — every computation is plain PHP running inside the same Moodle request (or the same Moodle cron run) that serves the page. Installing the plugin is the entire install.
- Not a black box. Both Analytics API models ship disabled by default. Until an administrator reviews and enables one, Model Analytics shows each indicator's live reading — a real number computed from real attempt data — never a trained AI prediction dressed up as one.
- Not a data exporter. Nothing in this plugin makes an outbound network call. The only way data leaves the server at all is a PDF an authorized teacher or manager explicitly downloads to their own browser — the exact same data they were already looking at on screen. See Privacy & Security.
- Not a replacement for STACK's own grading. Every response is graded through STACK's own CAS engine (
qtype_stack's question-engine API) — this plugin reads the result, it never recomputes or second-guesses a grade.
Where it came from
This plugin is the merger of two previously separate, independently installed Moodle plugins:
local_quizanalytics(the original) — course-wide comparison, per-quiz Question Analytics, and Solution Process Visualization.local_stackanalytics— the Analytics API models (Model 1, Model 2) and the non-ML Diagnostics Dashboard.
They now ship as one plugin, under local_quizanalytics's own component name, with one capability and one navigation entry — a teacher installs one plugin and sees one "Analytics" link, rather than finding, installing, and using two unrelated ones. The full account of the merge, including why the plugin's own name changed twice along the way, is in Architecture & Design.
Status
Stable as of v3.0.2, after real-course stress testing (see Getting Started for the numbers) and several rounds of bug fixes against real production data. Both Analytics API models still ship disabled by default, and Diagnostics Analytics and Solution Process Visualization are currently reachable by direct URL only, pending a redesign of how they're surfaced in the navigation — see Instructor Guide for exactly where to find them today.
Full, phase-by-phase release history: CHANGELOG.md.